


Come Now, We're Children (Let's Play A Game)

by orange_8_hands



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Death, F/M, Fandom, Fourth Wall, Gen, Leaning on the Fourth Wall, M/M, Podfic Available, Slash Goggles, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-25
Updated: 2012-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 21:38:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like tag.</p>
<p>It's like tag, but being 'It' means a murderous rampage and being caught means a bullet in your brain or claws across your throat or an arrow in your heart. It's like tag, with a lot of screaming and running around and hoping you can hide, you can escape. It's like tag, except for how it really isn't. </p>
<p>(Stiles is It, by the way. And he's winning.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Now, We're Children (Let's Play A Game)

**Author's Note:**

> **Trigger Warnings** : torture, violence, a very subtle implication of rape
> 
> **Note** : Gerard died in the season finale. The rest of it is canon-compliant.

  
It's like tag.  
  
It's like tag, but being 'It' means a murderous rampage and being caught means a bullet in your brain or claws across your throat or an arrow in your heart. It's like tag, with a lot of screaming and running around and hoping you can hide, you can escape. It's like tag, except for how it really isn't.   
  
(Stiles is It, by the way. And he's winning.)  
  
The first teen dead is Isaac. New favorite and all, give the audiences something to cry about. Poor orphan boy, with an abusive daddy and a dead brother and a missing mom. With those cute little curls and Scott-shaped smile. First to die, give the boy a prize.  
  
Danny and the other two betas go next. (And of course they do, of course it's those three that are barely named and one sentence long that go next. It's not a surprise except for how it was supposed to be better than this. Call it whatever you want, this is still reality, so Danny and Erica and Boyd of no last - or is it first? - name goes next. Out of the way, don't pause to mourn.)  
  
But now we're getting somewhere, now we're getting to the real group, the original five (minus Stiles, of course, you don't count the breakout king, not when he's the killer), so let's go into a little more detail, a little more screams. Jackson's turn, because he's a bully - sad backstory or not - or if not a bully then at least mean, or rather mean to Scott and Stiles, and that's enough, how much more explanation do you need.  
  
Jackson has his face ripped off with knives sharp enough to cut through...well, bone, I'm not sure a metaphor is really needed here. You may have seen something similar in the latest torture porn movie. Head wounds always bleed the most so a nice lake of blood spreads under his body, flowing into the cracks on the ground below him, soaking into his high priced cotton clothes. Stiles steps into it on his way to cutting off Jackson's fingertips. He's already dead at this point, but it's still funny.  
  
After Jackson is Allison. Allison is tied down in a chair and placed in front of an antique mirror. Allison's head is carefully kept from turning away from the view. Allison doesn't die violently. A needle is pushed into her arm and white liquid is released. Allison doesn't die violently, but she dies in agony. It's a fire that spreads through her bloodstream and into her heart. It's a liquid that pushes hammered nails under all of her skin, coats her inside with boils, makes her scream so badly it cuts her own voice off at a level too high for human ears to hear.  
  
(Are you wondering about the adults? Chris and Melissa and Peter and even Coach? Are you wondering about the _Sheriff_? Are you worried? Maybe you don't have to be. Maybe they all went to an out of state conference. Maybe they all went camping, wacky hijinks to occur in the next episode. Maybe I just forgot to mention they were the first dead, throats slit and piled high. They were the first killed, steel frame of a car bent to pieces, one limb flung from the windshield, the rest of the body twelve feet away. First ones gone, locked into a cell and set on fire, there's just so many _possibilities_. It's a game, really. Like Clue, Melissa and the baseball bat in the bedroom. Sheriff and the poisoned apple in the kitchen. No, no, go ahead, you pick, it's more enjoyable that way.)  
  
Poor Lydia. She's dressed very carefully, and led into a beautifully decorated living room. The walls are white and there is a flicker of gold in this room, painted lightly on the trim. A small figurine of porcelain sits on the end table, and there is a metal necklace slipped between the couch cushions. Lydia is given a little stool, like one you give a child so they can reach the kitchen sink, and the noose hung around her neck is made of purple silk. Lydia, I have a soft spot for Lydia. No one will ever know if she jumped before the stool was pushed over.  
  
(Dr. Deaton. Ms. Morrell. Are you whispering those names? Oh sweetheart, don't you get it yet? This doesn't end in rescue.)  
  
Derek comes next.  
  
I know, I know, you wanted Derek last, broody Derek and hyperactive Stiles, dorky Derek and heartbroken Stiles, we want Sterek you demand, and look, it would be nice, I'm not opposed to a little romance - and come now, he came before Lydia, a little credit would be appreciated - but that's not what this is. Scott is the direction of his loyalty, Scott is his north on all his moral compasses, and Derek looks good without a shirt on. Scott was always going to be last. Besides - and oh, this is embarrassing - Derek's _easier_ than Scott to kill. It makes me blush, but it's true. Out of the two of them, only one got his family killed; Melissa is still alive and kicking. (Well, she _was_ still alive and kicking. Her leg is unattached right now. As is the rest of her.) Only one has been paralyzed by the kanima (and more than once! Oh the shame.) Only one makes the worst plans known to man or werewolf or abominable snowman.   
  
Derek isn't set on fire. He isn't electrocuted and he isn't tossed into water deep enough an anchor around his foot can sink him. He isn't frozen because he doesn't believe in indecision. Derek, actually, is thrown into a hole a little less than double his height. If someone were to stand on his shoulders, that person could just reach the edge, maybe pull them out. But Derek isn't standing (and there's no one else in the hole anyways, though he tried); he's actually chained to the bottom with locks coated in wolf's bane. Derek looks up and is utterly silent as shovel-full after shovel-full is thrown in. He's dead long before the hole is filled.   
  
(It's a shame to tear your gaze away, but Greenberg's dead too, I feel I should mention. Or he was a figment of Coach's imagination. It's really six in one, half a dozen in the other at this point. Just stop grasping at straws now, it's pathetic.)  
  
Scott dies slowly. Scott dies over a period of weeks, not days or hours or minutes like the others. Scott loses a small piece of himself every time Stiles comes back. It doesn't matter where it starts or even where it ends. Do you really care? Do you really care if his eyes were plucked out first, or if his hands were broken into bone shards, or if his stomach was pounded into with a fist, over and over again? Do you care if his tongue was shredded or his legs were whipped? Do you care if it finally ends with a heart cut out of a chest?  
  
(You do? I apologize then. It was his stomach first, and then his legs, and then his hands and then his tongue and then his eyes and then his heart. That's the order Scott was killed in.)  
  
So what went wrong? When did this happen? Nice Guy Stiles. Surprisingly-calm-in-the-face-of-threats Stiles. Let's-kill-them first response Stiles. There has to be a reason, an excuse, not Stiles, not our lovely boy Stiles. Maybe his eyes turn black. Yeah, let's run with that, maybe his eyes turn black and deep inside is a sixteen year old boy screaming as everybody he loves and holds dear, holds sacred, really just everybody he _knows_ , is brutally destroyed by something wearing his skin. Maybe, maybe it's a demon, like from Supernatural, maybe it's a demon doing all of this.  
  
I'm not sure how that's supposed to make this better.  
  
But I guess we all have to sleep at night.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA 9-28-12: First, your comments and kudos-love have been overwhelming and I'm incredibly grateful for it. Second, reena-jenkins made this amazing podfic (and cover art) of this story, which can be found below. I still haven't found my words to explain how flabbergasted I am by this reading, but when I do they'll probably contain some form of the word "awesome".
> 
> ETA 10-14-12: tricksterangelshavemorefun also made [a podfic](http://www.mediafire.com/?49qdt5t75skca2l), I'm assuming because she likes seeing me flail trying to find words for how cool this is.
> 
> ETA 2-24-13: HeartsAndEngines _made me a song_ for this fic. I just, holy, what? *picks jaw off of floor* Here's [a link to this awesomeness](https://soundcloud.com/heartsandengines/a-fairytale-this-is-not).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Come Now, We're Children (Let's Play A Game)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/527594) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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